Mobilizing the Museum: Touring Exhibitions in Early Stalinist Poland, 1947–1949

ABSTRACT This article examines the origins, institutional frameworks, and pedagogical strategies of the “touring exhibitions” (“wystawy objazdowe”) program in early Stalinist Poland. Initiated in 1947 under the auspices of the National Museum in Warsaw and rapidly scaled by state cultural authorities, this program brought thematically curated exhibitions to rural and working‐class publics, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors within its first 3 years. Focusing on two case studies—a 1947 show dedicated to the nineteenth‐century academic painter Jan Matejko and the 1949 exhibition on poets Adam Mickiewicz and Alexander Pushkin—I argue that these displays reinterpreted the Polish art‐historical and literary canon to present state socialism as the culmination of Poland's collective struggle and contested identity. Drawing on pedagogical models inspired by Soviet historical materialism, the exhibitions combined visual didacticism, scripted interpretation, and logistical mobility to fulfill a dual purpose: expanding access to national culture while serving as a vehicle for political propaganda and an instrument of emergent Stalinist state formation.